﻿During a cordial breakfast in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, Otto Rapp kindly invited me to begin a blog and explore Archaic Visions here...My name is Bruce Rimell and I am a visionary artist and poet based in the twin cities of Leeds-Bradford in the north of the UK. My work springs from the alchemy of my own personal visions, both dreamlike and entheogenic, sensations of archaeological and mythical prehistories and migraine experiences since childhood. I seek to place my images somewhere between an ancestral past and shamanic future.

A key quest in my practice is to bring authentic mandalas of ancient archetypes and religions into the modern field of experience, allowing these archaic forms to challenge and transform our contemporary perceptions, whence springs my artistic motto: Come And See, Look Within: What Will You Find...?

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This blog is entitled 'Archaic Visions', which means that it will primarily focus upon what I consider to be pre-historical and pre-modern examples of visionary artforms. While the Visionary Art community has given great emphasis upon Renaissance techniques, Old Masters and their subsequent lineages, less is mentioned of the expansive global vistas which preceded these epochs and which form the vast majority of human creative endeavour. Occasionally mention is made of Palaeolithic, or Minoan, or again Mayan expressions, but this is often to serve an illustrative point in the light of later artistic developments, or to inform a particular visionary lineage with prehistoric colours.

'Archaic Visions' will thus seek to explore these vistas, delving into archaeo-mythical and anthropological analyses of artefacts and peoples with an authenticity that challenges and strips away modern Western expectations of where we humans have come from and allows prehistoric peoples to speak for themselves, in their own authentic voices.

Since my areas of expertise include the Minoans, the Classic Maya and their modern descendants, artforms of the European Upper Palaeolithic and contemporary indigenous cultures of Mexico, the blog will probably place a fairly heavy focus on these initially, but I will also take this opportunity to explore much wider vistas of prehistory. The divergent realities enfolded in contemporary indigenous languages and the cultural divide implied by such differences is also a key interest which will find its way here.

I am also beginning to consider a few transcultural meta-theses of archaic and contemporary visionary art which will find their way here, and I plan to use this blog as a vehicle to develop a long-planned longform essay consisting of my own personal views of transcendent experiences, identities and artforms simply called 'On Vision', which will be posted as and when written, in several parts.

Images and viewpoints redolent in the Queer and Non-Heteronormative will also be featured: being queer myself, this is a standpoint I can't ignore, but actually such third-gender-perspectives are often essential for a fuller understanding of indigenous and prehistorical cultural forms. This notion will be illustrated quite shortly in a brief upcoming study of the Aztec god Xochipilli.

I will also state here quite openly that crackpot theories, modern cargo-cults and 'The Truth They Don't Want You To Know' will be heartily avoided! I consider such views to be little more than modern Western expectations of prehistory: at best, they recycle clichéd old stereotypes, riding roughshod over the subtleties of indigenous and prehistoric perspectives, while at worst can form a kind of 21st century Colonialism. This may or may not be a controversial point, but my inner sense of shamanic discernment suggests such expectational and - dare I say it - ignorant views cannot be elevated to a visionary status. Hence, I will challenge these commonly-held views in the Visionary Community here.

I will also sometimes feature my own work, and the work of others which I think illuminate Archaic Visionary perspectives. Museum and gallery exhibitions will also be promoted here where relevant. Comments will be open for now, although I won't necessarily have much time to participate in any resultant (and quite welcome!) debates. Posts will be occasional and irregular. I'm aiming for two or three per month, but we shall see...

Beautiful intro. Hope to see some things on the Mesopotamian area and era - including a small sub-group calling themselves the Illuvvians and the Akkadians.

Having spent several years in seminary becoming a certified catechist for the Roman Catholic Church - there are so many religious practices and edicts that I can share with you to debunk that nonsense. I am no longer Catholic - they taught it right out of me.

So please reach out if you feel a question that could use a well documented answer. I know the shortcuts.

Teresa

Great write and can't wait for more.

Reply

Otto

7/4/2014 06:57:38 am

Thanks for your comment Theresa, - I am sure Bruce has tons of material in mind!